Former Kakilang artistic director and versatile artist An-Ting 安婷, and writer and performer Daniel York Loh released the soundtrack to their award-winning multimedia work, every dollar is a soldier/with money you’re a dragon.
An-Ting 安婷 is a talented artist who excels in a variety of artistic mediums, including piano and electronic compositions. She incorporates a variety of experiences—drawn from her own life—into her works, fusing music with other artistic mediums to explore the depths of the human condition.
Daniel York Loh is an artist, musician, filmmaker, and writer. Currently, he serves as Associate Artistic Director of the celebrated combined arts organisation Kakilang, which is financed by the Arts Council.
An-Ting 安婷 and Daniel York Loh use spoken word and electronic music to create a powerful lament on the immigrant experience. They juxtapose the harsh experiences of the impoverished first Chinese settlers in London with the opulent world of privileged but bitter émigré William Waldorf Astor. They reflect on the need for money, status, and the right to call 'home' in a land that can either reject or embrace you.
An-Ting 安婷 's score is a soaring blend of distinctive "Asia beats," a melancholy tack piano, a jaunty waltz, and an elegiac erhu and pipa melody that transports us effortlessly across entire continents, oceans, and winter prairies. It also transports us into the dark holds of ships, the eerie magnificence of Astor's very own Xanadu of Two Temple Place, smoke-filled Victoriana London, even smokier opium dens, and the growing concrete mountain range of Manhattan across centuries and up to the present. Daniel York Loh, a renowned classical actor, narrates his epic text, which The Upcoming describes as a striking delivery with words portraying an array of emotions that perfectly complement the swell from the music.
“I wanted to write about migrant journeys. About loss and loneliness, about what we take with us and what we leave behind, and the legacy we want to impart to the next generation. And what we’ll do to ‘belong’,” Daniel York Loh comments on the release.